Today is Thanksgiving, so I guess that it’s appropriate that I would write a blog about being thankful. Yesterday, I had a moment of being thankful for something that had previously drove me up a wall. Which funny story, God has a great way of doing this in my life.
So a lot of the ministry that we have been doing this month has been door to door evangelism. This isn’t a new thing for me, in fact this is something that I grew doing, and have learned too many methods of this to count. I’m not really a huge fan of any particular approach to evangelism. However, one of the first methods I learned was the first question that we asked when someone answered the door was if you were to die tonight, would you go to heaven or hell, and this method does just really bother me. When I ask that question I immediately feel like I spark an environment of comparison and condemnation.
So when we arrived to our first day of ministry here in Nicaragua, we were paired with a pastor that had a 10 minute time limit on us per house and the first question he asked was “are you going to heaven or hell, do you wanna accept Jesus? Yes or no?” and then we would move onto the next house. It was aggravating to say the least because I, and most of the people in the group I am doing ministry with, would much rather get to know where the people on the other side of the door are standing rather than just spending 10 minutes asking them if they are going to hell or not.
So it’s no surprise that I wasn’t thrilled when I saw that yesterday we were paired with that same pastor for door to door evangelism. However, as we approached our last house in the village that we were at yesterday, and it was my turn to talk. I really felt like Jesus had something in store for this man. Even though He told us that he was a Christian, I still walked through the gospel story with him. The man then told us he went to church and loved Jesus. Then the pastor that we were with like he usually does asked the man “if you were to die right now, would you go to heaven or hell?” That was when the guy then told us that he knows that Jesus is in his heart but he doesn’t know if he was a good enough person to get into heaven because he has a drinking problem.
Then I got to talk with this man and remind him that salvation was a free gift and it’s that we are all sinners that have fallen short, and that’s exactly why God sent Jesus to die on the cross for us. The bible even says, “Yet, while we still sinners, Christ died for us.” And that God’s love is unconditional.
At this moment, this guys whole demeanor changed. He had a light of hope in his tear filled eyes that God still loved him even though he struggled with addiction. So this Thanksgiving I am thankful for that pastor being straightforward because without it we wouldn’t have been able to encourage the man, or pray over his drinking problem.
Please continue to pray for Nicaragua as this place has a lot of people that know who Jesus is, but they don’t have a personal relationship with Him. Even the evangelical Christians here are extremely legalistic and most of the churches here are corrupt. Because of this, we have encountered a lot of people that have been hurt by the church. Please pray that the people here would encounter a genuine church and be able push deeper into a relationship with Jesus so that the light of His love would spread across this country like wildlife.
